Perchance to Dream
by purrfect
Summary: Draco and Ginny can never be more than lovers in the dark. Is it enough?


_I have a soft spot for Draco, and while I will always prefer that Harry find his way to Ginny, I can see the lure of Draco's darkness to someone like her, who has been tainted by her own experience with Tom Riddle. This is inspired by the song "Behind Blue Eyes", most recently recorded by Limp Bizkit. And yes, it has been done, but, hey, this is my turn at it._

I am beautiful, silver blonde hair and ice blue eyes, like the fairy prince, come to kiss the maiden awake. I know this, and have used it to my advantage more times than I can count.

Life is a game to be won.

I hurt other people; they do not hurt me.

I do not offer excuses for my behavior. I am myself. My choices are my own. That doesn't mean that part of me, sometimes, can't wish I were someone, anyone, else.

That she loved someone other than who I am.

I suppose you could say Fate has been cruel to me; my name alone makes people cringe away from me. I am tainted, tarred with the brush of Death. I suppose I did not choose to whom I was born. But then, none of us have that choice, and it is my nature to turn any situation to my advantage.

She chooses her path and stands beside me.

I am in awe of her.

I have made people bleed. I have made them cry. I have felt their souls flee as I murmured strange words in a foreign tongue, and I have felt no remorse.

Only, sometimes, when I can't sleep, when the nightmares threaten to choke me, I look outside at the night. The midnight sky looks like my soul; it is then that I wish the stars were brighter, and the darkness not so deep. She stirs in our bed and reaches for me.

In her arms, I dream of a life not yet lived.

I look at her and it strikes me occasionally to wonder why she stays. She says I am not cruel to her in private, and that is all that matters. I know, however, that she pays a price for loving me; I see it in her soft doe eyes, on her gentle, pretty face when she thinks I'm not looking. I know she cries for me, for her lost prince, and wishes for the fairy tale I cannot, will not, promise her.

There is no tomorrow.

She sleeps like an angel, and in the moments between dreams and reality, I can pretend, just for a moment, that I am what she deserves. There can be wishing as her breath stirs the hair at the nape of my neck and her slender, freckled arms hold me, and I can believe that she will remain at my side forever.

Then the Mark burns, and I go, hating myself, hating her, hating the life that has chosen me as much as I have chosen it.

Sometimes, even the choices we make mock us.

It's the hatred, I think, that keeps my life from killing us both. My hatred of what I do, and her hatred of how it makes me feel. We don't speak of it. To speak of it would be to corrupt its power. To speak of it would mean I would have to speak of myself, and to speak of myself is to speak of horror.

She should not know horror.

She is not fragile, but she is not meant for my truth.

She loves me anyway.

I am overcome at times by crippling doubt. Would she love me, the Prince of Ice, if thawed? Is she drawn to what I am, broken, instead of what I could be, whole? I am too much of a coward to find out for sure.

She thinks I am brave.

Sometimes, it is a curse that she is too honest, too young, too hopeful to lie to me. Perhaps, if she could only lie, we could rule from my throne and close the doors forever to those who would put the lie to our love. Perhaps, if she could only be other than she is, if I could only be other than I am, then we could be more than lovers in the dark.

Or perhaps I wish for death, and she is all that keeps me clinging to life.

Then there are the moments, unexpected, sudden and atrocious, that I see darkness slithering behind her beautiful eyes. I am reminded that she is not only gentleness and honesty and love; she is pain and death and fear. In those moments where I am faltering, wishing for the fairy tale that is not ours, she wraps her darkness around me like a cloak, offering it to me to shore up my defenses. The darkness, however, is not her natural habitat, while it is my home.

She is not my savior, and I am not hers. I will never be more than the Prince of Ice. She will never be more than Ginny.

Together, we will never be more than pain.

But I will never stop dreaming.


End file.
